For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Ten Considerations For Voice Portal Upgrades

Develop Your Priorities Before Making An IVR Vendor Selection

by Elizabeth Herrell, September 1, 2010

Infrastructure decision-makers who plan to upgrade their interactive voice response (IVR) system should consider changes in customers' expectations, technology improvements, and cost models before launching vendor evaluations for voice portal (VP) upgrades. . . .

For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals

How The Adoption Of Several Important Emerging Technologies Affects Sourcing

by Chris Andrews, August 31, 2010

Many sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals who Forrester speaks with know that they need to play a proactive role in sourcing emerging technologies but have difficulty identifying which technologies matter most for their business. Interest . . .

For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals

Multisourcing: No Silver Bullet, But Benefits Are Achievable

Clients Find Value In Multisourcing Efforts Despite Challenges

by Bill Martorelli, August 27, 2010

Although multisourcing programs encounter the same frustrations as single-sourcing environments, clients believe that their multisourcing efforts are bearing fruit, particularly in the areas of access to skills and maintaining competitive pressure on . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Q&A: Impact Of IBM's POWER7 And PowerVM On Workload Optimized Systems Design

PowerVM Is A Critical Advantage For IBM's Power Systems

by Brad Day, August 27, 2010

IBM's POWER7 system — arguably the most dramatic server design development since the first POWER4 dual-core microprocessor architecture — makes advanced virtualization stacks a core differentiator in creating next-generation workload-optimized systems . . .

For Business Process Professionals

Benchmarks For CRM Selection And Deployment

Size Up Your CRM Initiative Compared Against 99 Projects

by William Band, August 26, 2010

How does your customer relationship management (CRM) project compare with those at other organizations? Forrester surveyed 99 organizations that are using one of 19 leading CRM suite solutions to understand their CRM solution purchase patterns, buying . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Market Overview: Smartphone Management

Empower Workers With The Freedom To Choose Their Preferred Mobile Devices

by Benjamin Gray, Christian Kane, August 26, 2010

Within the next 12 to 18 months, most IT managers worldwide will significantly alter their client computing strategies, and this will have a profound impact on smartphone adoption and management. Necessitating this change is a significant generational . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

Compliance With Clouds: Caveat Emptor

by Chenxi Wang, Ph.D., August 26, 2010

Today's organizations face aggressive cost-cutting and efficiency pressures that drive businesses to consider cloud sourcing solutions. While the many properties of cloud services, such as elasticity, low entry costs, and faster time-to-market, are well . . .

For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals

Inquiry Spotlight: Sourcing Strategy, Q1 And Q2 2010

by Christine Ferrusi Ross, August 25, 2010

Forrester's inquiry analysis shows that sourcing and vendor management (SVM) professionals are thinking more holistically and strategically about their role. Forty-two percent of the 966 inquiries from SVM professionals that Forrester received in the . . .

For Security & Risk Professionals

Market Overview: Fraud Management Solutions

Seven Tenets Of Effectively Combating Fraud Costs

by Andras Cser, August 25, 2010

Fraud causes companies to lose money in many ways: They face losses due to chargebacks, unrecoverable transfers, and unnecessary shipping costs; and spend extensive time and resources investigating many transactions. Fraud can impact a company's goodwill. . . .

For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals

The Forrester Wave™: North American Applications Outsourcing, Q3 2010

IBM And Accenture Lead A Highly Competitive Field In A Mature Industry

by Bill Martorelli, August 25, 2010

In Forrester's 38-criteria evaluation of 12 leading providers of applications outsourcing (AO) solutions vendors, Forrester found that in this mature market IBM and Accenture lead the pack due to their superior organizational breadth and depth of capability. . . .

For Business Process Professionals

The Forrester Wave™: Business Process Management Suites, Q3 2010

Pegasystems, Appian, IBM, and Software AG Lead The Pack

by Clay Richardson, August 24, 2010

Forrester evaluated 11 leading business process management (BPM) suite vendors against 148 criteria reflecting the requirements of business process professionals running large-scale BPM programs. We found that Pegasystems and Appian lead the pack with . . .

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

Define Your Mobile Development Strategy

Use Forrester's Mobile POST Method To Create A Mobile Development Plan

by Jeffrey S. Hammond, August 24, 2010

Developing mobile applications used to be an arcane activity pursued by highly specialized developers, but no more. The surge in popularity of Android devices, BlackBerries, and iPhones has application development professionals gearing up to incorporate . . .

For Business Process Professionals

The Forrester Wave™: Order Management Hubs, Q3 2010

Oracle EBS And Sterling Commerce Lead, With SAP, Oracle Siebel, And Microsoft Close Behind

by Roy C. Wildeman, Craig Le Clair, August 19, 2010

In Forrester's 112-criteria evaluation of order management hub (OMH) vendors, Oracle E-Business Suite and Sterling Commerce led the pack among the Leaders because of their ability to support both end-to-end ordering processes as well as order hub infrastructure. . . .

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

Global Banking Platform Deals 2009: Regions And Functionality

A Cold Breeze And Only One Hot Region Characterize The 2009 Market

by Jost Hoppermann, August 19, 2010

Forrester surveyed 17 vendors of globally deployed banking platforms on their 2009 deals. The regional analysis shows that Asia Pacific has been the single highly active region. Most of the remaining regions of the world show different levels of mediocre . . .

For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals

Right And Wrong Reasons To Work With Tier Two Offshore Providers

The Right Selection Of Tier Two Specialists Is Key To Higher Value

by Sudin Apte, August 17, 2010

As companies focus on deriving more business value from their IT services suppliers, they find that specialists often provide niche, deep domain capability and flexibility that is tough to find in top service providers. Identifying a true specialist in . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

The Past, Present, And Future Of Replication

Upgrade Continuity And Recovery With Replication

by Stephanie Balaouras, Rachel A. Dines, August 17, 2010

Tape is not dead, and in fact, a large number of companies still rely heavily on tape for disaster recovery (DR). Tape is affordable and removable, but as the requirement to recover IT services after a disruption has moved from days to hours, backup and . . .

For Content & Collaboration Professionals

The Next Wave Of Office Productivity

Mobile, Cloud, And Collaboration Are Leading The Transformation

by Sheri McLeish, August 16, 2010

Microsoft Office remains a mainstay in workplaces. Despite media buzz about online alternatives like Google Apps Premier Edition or pragmatic arguments about free Open Office suites, most enterprises have long-terms plans to continue their Microsoft Office . . .

For Sourcing & Vendor Management Professionals

Inquiry Spotlight: Sourcing Execution, Q1 And Q2 2010

by Christine Ferrusi Ross, August 13, 2010

Forrester's sourcing and vendor management (SVM) clients frequently ask, "What are my peers doing?" To help SVM professionals gain insights into their peer group, we tracked all of the inquiries asked by our SVM clients in the first half of 2010. Of the . . .

For Customer Intelligence Professionals

The Forrester Wave™: Online Testing, Q3 2010

Adobe And Autonomy Lead A Pack Of Strong Performers

by Joe Stanhope, August 13, 2010

In Forrester's inaugural evaluation of online testing vendors, we researched eight companies across 82 criteria. We found that Adobe and Autonomy lead the pack because of their consistent strength across the full range of capabilities and their support . . .

For Content & Collaboration Professionals

Four Giants Compete For Your Cloud Email Business

Microsoft And Google Lead; IBM's In The Hunt; Cisco's Just Starting Out

by Ted Schadler, August 13, 2010

Google jumped into the enterprise email market in 2007 with a $50 annual subscription to its cloud email service and turned the market upside down. Microsoft quickly re-evaluated and repriced its Exchange Online offering to $5 per user per month; IBM . . .

For Application Development & Delivery Professionals

Database Tools Fill Gaps In Vendors' Bundled Tools

DBAs Gain Advanced Yet Usable Features For Heterogeneous DBMS

by Noel Yuhanna, August 12, 2010

Vendors continue adding new and improved database administration features to their database management systems (DBMS) to automate more functions, yet enterprises with large and complex environments still struggle, especially with security, availability, . . .

For Business Process Professionals

The Forrester Wave™: Open Source Business Intelligence (BI), Q3 2010

Actuate BIRT Leads, With Jaspersoft Enterprise, SpagoBI, Pentaho Enterprise, And Pentaho Community Close Behind

by Jeffrey S. Hammond, Boris Evelson, August 10, 2010

Comparing open source BI technologies is often an apples-to-oranges comparison: 1) not all vendors include the same functionality in the free community versions of the software versus commercial open source versions that carry license and/or support cost, . . .

For Technology Product Management & Marketing Professionals

Demand Insights: The SMB Software Market 2010

Small And Medium-Size Businesses Are Defying Gravity

by Tim Harmon, August 9, 2010

Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs), like their enterprise brethren, are shifting their technology focus from IT to business technology (BT). As their focus on business solutions — as opposed to technology products — continues to grow, SMBs are now . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Time To Revisit Your Unified Communications Priorities

Phase In Key UC Applications To Accelerate Business Benefits

by Elizabeth Herrell, August 6, 2010

Unified communications (UC) continues to expand, according to Forrester's 2010 survey of telecom decision-makers in North America and Europe. UC is the enabling platform for the integration of communications and collaboration to improve business processes . . .

For Infrastructure & Operations Professionals

Cloud Storage Comes Down To Earth

Cloud Storage Is Ready Today, But Only For Three Limited Use Cases

by Andrew Reichman, August 5, 2010

Few advances in storage have been hyped as much as "cloud storage." Every vendor in the space is painting its products and message with a cloud veneer. But for all this hype, there is little clarity about what cloud storage really means and how it might . . .